


Muscle Memory

by Atisenia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Cats, F/M, Mentions of Animal Trafficking, Tumblr: letswritesherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 02:57:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atisenia/pseuds/Atisenia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sherlock refuses to help and the police aren't working fast enough, Molly takes matters into her own hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Muscle Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Let's Write Sherlock's [Challenge 5](http://letswritesherlock.tumblr.com/post/60963479493/for-this-challenge-we-wanted-to-combine-the).  
> I really don't know how it ended up to be so much about cats. But there you go.  
> I love Molly Hooper, so I figured she'd be perfect for this challenge. 
> 
> Still not a native speaker, so if you see any mistakes, you can let me know.;)

The first time she came to, Molly felt twelve again, lying on the ground in her grandmother’s barn. The soft summer breeze carried the smell of freshly cut grass and sunburned, blooming flowers.

She could hear someone talking nearby in hushed voices so maybe Robert hadn’t left yet. But why would he bring Jenny with him? She wasn’t that fond of their climbing games...

Molly tried to focus on what was being said but her head ached and her ears kept ringing, and so the darkness claimed her again.

 

~*~

 

Toby was behaving like he usually did whenever he caught a glimpse of a carrier: he bit, scratched and tried to get away from Molly’s grasp, making desperate noises that kept breaking Molly’s heart. She needed to take him to the vet though, so she just held him tightly and let him know how sorry she was over and over again.

When Toby was already in place, held securely by the harness, he went completely still and his eyes spoke of betrayal.

“Sorry,” Molly said again, massaging her hands. There were a few sore spots where Toby’s claws reached her even if he didn’t draw blood this time. She had meant to cut his claws but then Sherlock appeared in the morgue and asked to see another body, then dragged her across the city just to prove someone wrong and she came back home well past midnight.

She really should work on being more assertive, she supposed, but Sherlock had more respect for her since he came back from the dead and being around him was actually more fun now that she got rid of her stupid infatuation.

When Molly lifted up the carrier, Toby gave her his best sulking expression and still refused to move.

“Don’t be like that!” she chided him. “You’ll feel all better when we get back, you’ll see.”

Toby narrowed his eyes at her.

 

~*~

 

“Do you want to see the kittens?” Robert asked from where he’d been bouncing on his feet, looking at the nine year old Molly with a promise of fun.

Molly hadn’t even managed to say hello to her grandma before she got whisked away by her cousin. He was only a year younger than her and Molly loved him to bits (though she’d never admit that). They always played together when Molly spent her holiday at her grandma’s, often avoiding Rob’s annoying older sister Jenny. She thought of herself as almost adult (though she was only thirteen, the liar) and refused to get involved in anything that might be considered childish. Robert thought it was because she was already born dull and played numerous pranks on her.

“You have kittens?” Molly asked, excited.

Rob nodded solemnly.

“All three of them,” he said. “They scratch.” He grinned widely, as if it were the best thing about the cats.

“Where are they?”

“I’ll race you to them,” Rob said and started running.

“Hey!” Molly protested but followed soon enough, ignoring how her nice shoes slowly became covered in mud. They came to a stop in front of a garage and Molly shoved at her cousin. “It’s not fair if I don’t know where we’re running!”

Robert just shrugged and opened the door for her, making a good show of his supposedly well-developed manners. Molly sighed heavily and entered the garage. She stood in the middle of it, her arms folded, and looked around.

“Are they invisible?” she asked when she noticed a crate with hay in it but no kittens.

“What?”

“Are the kittens invisible?” she asked again, turning to look at her confused cousin.

“No,” he said with a frown. “Are you daft?” A pause. “But that would be so cool!” He grinned.

“You wouldn’t see them though, that’s not cool,” Molly said.

“It is.”

“Is not.”

“Is too.”

“Is not.”

“Is too.”

“Whatever.” Molly rolled her eyes again. “But they’re not here, so where are they?”

Rob beamed at her.

“We’re going to find them!”

 

~*~

 

Molly strode into the New Scotland Yard building with Toby still sulking in his carrier. He’d been sulking since they stepped out of her flat, he continued sulking when they waited for the vet to take care of him and he was, amazingly, not done sulking yet.

“I told you I was sorry,” Molly said. A couple of people turned to look at her and she tried not to fidget. It was perfectly normal to talk to one’s pet. “This is important, okay?”

Toby looked at her with slightly narrowed eyes and turned his head away, not at all pacified.

Molly sighed. Maybe she could leave it until tomorrow after all...

But no, a lot of things could happen in one day. A lot of bad things. To creatures that couldn’t defend themselves. No, Molly needed to go now.

“Excuse me! Could you watch Toby for a moment?” she asked a familiar looking woman, who huffed with indignation when presented with the carrier. “I need to see Detective Inspector Lestrade.”

“What you need, _Doctor Hooper_ , is to take care of your own pets!” the woman said and Molly finally took a moment to properly look at her. Ah, no wonder she seemed familiar.

“Please, Sergeant Donovan, I won’t be long and he... well, he’s not really a trouble like this, you won’t have to... I have a crime to report.”

Which was _technically_ true. What she didn’t feel obligated to say was that she only suspected the crime had been committed and had no evidence to prove it.  

“You can report it to me,” came the response. Molly pursed her lips.

“B-but... Lestrade...”

“Is busy,” Donovan interrupted her. “I, on the other hand, am apparently free enough to watch over people’s pets,” she said, annoyed, and pushed Toby’s transporter back into Molly’s arms. Toby didn’t like that at all. “Follow me.”

And Molly did.

 

~*~

 

The second time she came to, there was a gentle hand shaking her by the shoulder and the other one holding her head, as if assuring that no harm could come to her.

Molly slowly opened her eyes, confused. The smell from earlier, the smell irrevocably linked to her childhood memories, still lingered in the air. Was it her grandma waking her up so that she didn’t waste the day? But no, the face looking down at her with concern was definitely male. Did she fall out of the tree again? That would explain all the arguing in the background that made her head hurt.

She blinked several times and, at last, the face above her came fully into focus.

“Molly, thank God!” Lestrade said and let out a sigh of relief. He withdrew his hands and Molly greeted the loss with a strange disappointment.

“Greg.” Her voice broke on the single syllable and she winced. Whatever they drugged her with, it must have affected her quite badly.

“Oh, so he’s _Greg_ now, isn’t he?” a female voice sneered.

“Donovan!” Greg chided and turned to Molly with a stern expression again. “Can you sit?”

“I-I think so,” Molly said and tried to do just that. The world just wouldn’t stop spinning.

“Whoa, easy.”

Greg helped her so that she could lean her back against the wall. She felt a bit nauseous and her head kept spinning, but there didn’t seem to be more problems. It was hard to tell though when she was in such a state.

“Why are you here?” she asked Greg.

There was a slightly pained expression on the Inspector’s face.

“When you’re in charge of people, you tend to notice when one or two of them disappear in the middle of a case,” he said and looked pointedly at the pair sitting opposite from them.

“This wouldn’t have happened if our little miss sunshine here didn’t decide to play detective!” Anderson snapped.

“No one asked you to follow us into that building,” Donovan told him.

Greg sighed.

“This is going to be fun, isn’t it?”

Molly giggled nervously.

 

~*~

 

“So you’re saying your vet is somehow involved in illegal animal trafficking?” Donovan slowly said. Molly could hear the doubt in her voice.

“Well, um, actually, Toby’s vet, obviously. Because, well, you know. I don’t need—” The look Donovan gave her made her cringe and Molly just nodded.

“Right.” A pause. “You know that’s a serious accusation based only on a phone-call you eavesdropped?”

“I know. But you could search his office, right? I’m sure—“

“Miss Hooper,” Donovan interrupted. “I know you mean well, but unless there’s a serious reason to be suspicious — and I don’t think a phone-call taken out of context counts — we can’t exactly arrest anybody.”

“And yet you did that to Sherlock,” Molly said. She would have felt guilty about the uneasy look on Donovan’s face, except she was really tired of having this conversation.

“There were reasons to believe—“

“No, you... you just chose to believe what was convenient for you.”

“Okay, look, Miss Hooper. I’ve already said I was sorry, alright? You think I wanted all of that shit to happen? Because I didn’t. But at the time, it made perfect sense and I had a little more than just a phone-call to draw conclusions from.” Molly slumped in her chair and ignored the angry noises Toby emitted. Donovan sighed. “This is pointless anyway, you’re not here because of Sherlock.” She frowned. “Actually, why _didn’t_ you go ask for his help?” Molly pursed her lips and looked pointedly at the floor. “You did, didn’t you? And he refused to help. It was probably too _boring_ for him to even consider.

“I don’t see you taking the case either,” Molly said, trying not to sound angry or desperate.

Donovan pursed her lips.

“I’d talk to him, but that might actually make him more cautious. I’ll keep an eye on him and if you find something to back up your suspicion, you’re welcome to file a report.”

Molly stood up clutching Toby’s carrier, nodded tersely and walked out of Donovan’s office.

 

~*~

 

“Why are we still here?” Molly asked when the world finally stopped spinning.

“If you haven’t noticed yet, we’re kind of trapped here,” Anderson said.

“There’s a door in the floor. We could just... walk out of here, couldn’t we?”

“Not really, since the door is locked from outside and probably reinforced. We checked, we’re not stupid,” Anderson said.

“Besides, we’re on a third floor and I don’t exactly see the man leaving us a ladder,” Donovan added.

“So you want to sit here and wait until someone finds us?” Molly asked, looking at Greg. He shrugged.

“We don’t really have much choice,” Greg said. “He took our phones. He’s probably in hiding somewhere already.”

“Right. Okay, um...”

Molly stood up and waited a moment until she was certain she wouldn’t fall. Then she nodded to herself and started searching the room.

“What are you doing?” Greg asked.

“Looking for a way out.”

“There is no other way out!” Anderson snapped.

“Then I’ll find us one anyway.”

 

~*~

 

“Maybe they’re in the hay,” Rob said after they searched — ineffectively — the other garages, the wood shack, the barn and the attic. “They would be warm there, I suppose.”

“Alright,” Molly said. “But we can’t reach all the places.”

“We’ll go and see. Maybe they’ll make some noise.”

It turned out to be rather difficult to manoeuvre the hay covered with tarpaulin in random places. Molly nearly fell down when she tried to reach an already familiar cat and scratch him behind the ears. The cat did fall after rolling too far on the stack, which resulted in a well-meant but not really necessary rescue mission.

No sign of the kittens though.

“Maybe we should just follow the mother?” Molly suggested, her hair full of hay. “Do you know which one it is?”

Robert beamed at her.

“Yes. Follow me.”

~*~

 

Molly was definitely not suited for detective work. She was good at what she did and if... someone needed her for analyzing something for... them, she’d happily do it from her lab. A quick look at the crime scene might also be just okay. But this, this was breaking and entering, just to find evidence, and it was miles out of her comfort zone.

All of this was her stupid cat’s fault. And Donovan’s. But mostly Toby’s. He just kept looking at her with his big stupid eyes, meowing sweetly for a change and taking residence on her lap while she watched telly, just ready to be petted. It made unwanted images appear in Molly’s mind. Illegal experiments, animal fights, torturing... And then her stupid, stupid cat would just... act like a perfectly behaved pet, so trusting and love seeking, and she knew she had to do something.

And that’s why she was standing right outside the pet clinic now. In the cold. In the dark. Without a plan. Just waiting for Phillip to go home so she could present the police with some evidence.

When the lights finally went out and she saw the man closing the door and going away, she took a deep breath, told her heart to stop beating so fast and put her gloves on.

 

~*~

 

“I don’t know what you’re expecting to find,” Donovan said, annoyed, glaring at the crops in front of her. “It’s not like you can read clues from wheat.”

“It’s rye, actually,” Molly said, inspecting the windows. She stopped in front of one of them with a thoughtful expression.

“Molly?” Greg asked softly next to her. She looked at him and took in his frown.

Molly sighed and addressed Donovan again.

“You’re a dog person, aren’t you?” she asked and opened the window. It creaked awfully and got stuck midway.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Donovan asked.

Molly worked on the hinges trying to make them budge. Wordlessly and without asking for an explanation, Greg set to work beside her.

“It means that you expect constant loyalty, a certain... manner of acting.” The hinges gave out and the window fell out completely. “Sorry,” Molly said automatically, before she realized she apologized to the criminal. “Anyway, you... you don’t have patience for taming. You... you couldn’t just... sit quietly and wait until the cat comes to you. You need to earn its trust first and it’s not always easy.” Molly sat on the ledge, where the window had been just moments ago and took a deep breath. “But you learn some things in the process.”

“You can’t be serious!” said Anderson in a slightly panicked voice. Molly heard hurried movement behind her.

“Don’t you think this is taking the dog-cat comparison a little too far?” Donovan asked softly in a voice she probably reserved for negotiating. Or the victims. Molly didn’t find any of those options particularly comforting.

She looked at Greg.

“I can do it,” Molly said. “I won’t even have to jump, this branch over here is perfect.”

“Yeah, but what if it breaks?” Greg asked and he looked uneasy. “We can wait until someone comes rescue us. It can’t be that bad.”

Molly smiled.

“Perhaps,” she said, gripped the branch of the tree that grew just outside the barn and slid out of the window to the collective gasp from her companions.

 

~*~

 

Molly searched Phillip’s office, careful not to alert people to her presence with unnecessary lights. She also tried not to disturb the order of Phillip’s things. She wasn’t sure if stolen evidence could even be considered evidence but maybe it would be enough to get a warrant. It wouldn’t do any good if she doomed the case from the start.

It was rather pointless anyway, since she hadn’t managed to find anything even remotely important yet. She was about to give up when she heard some noise outside the door. She froze and only managed to duck behind the desk before the door opened and the torchlight began searching the room.

She heard a deep sigh.

“You can come out,” Donovan said making Molly’s heart sink with relief from where it had been trying to escape through her throat. “I know you’re here, Doctor Hooper.”

On second thought, being caught somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be by an officer of the law wasn’t exactly a good idea either. She deemed it safer than being caught by the vet and possibly murdered to cover his tracks and revealed herself to the rather annoyed Detective Sergeant.

“When I told you to get some evidence, I didn’t exactly mean illegally,” Donovan said.

“Maybe I’ve been around Sherlock for too long,” Molly suggested and resumed searching for evidence.

Donovan made a face.

“Probably.” She looked at Molly and sighed. “There better _be_ evidence to find,” she said and started searching the other side of the room. They worked in silence until the door opened again. When Molly looked up with fear, she recognized — again, with relief — the same man Sherlock had wanted her to contradict. He didn’t look very happy.

“What is it this time, Sally?” he asked, annoyed.

Anderson. His name was Anderson.

“Why aren’t you at the crime scene?” Donovan asked sharply.

“Well, I don’t exactly see you there either,” the man pouted.

Donovan sent him a cool glance and folded her arms.

“You know Lestrade will figure it out any second now, right?” she said. “You were supposed to stay at the crime scene so he wouldn’t notice I’m gone.”

“And how does that work exactly?”

“Um...” Molly said and both of them looked at her as if surprised she was even there. Typical. “I’ll just... go look in the other... um... rooms,” she muttered and left the two of them still arguing.

Well, her little impromptu breaking and entering didn’t quite go according to plan — barely existent, sure, but there nonetheless. She could easily slip out of the building and go home, leaving the matters in Scotland Yard’s hands.

_Or_ she could finish what she started and search the storage room.

Molly looked around, sighing at the many possible hiding spots. She approached the first cupboard but before she could start searching it, she felt a prick of a needle on her neck and everything went dark.

 

~*~

 

“You can’t be serious!” Molly said, looking at Robert with wide eyes. “How did they get there?”

“I don’t know! They climbed?”

“So why can’t they just climb down?”

“Maybe they’re scared? They’re probably scared. Do you hear how they meow? You would be scared too!”

“No, I wouldn’t!” Molly protested. “I know how to climb down a tree!”

They followed the cats’ mother after she had been given food and she led them to the apple tree behind the barn. There were three kittens currently stuck on it, and on the higher branches too. Their mother looked at Molly and Rob with something they later described as pleading but which was more likely suspicion.

“Do you think you can climb the tree and bring the kittens down?” Robert asked. Molly knew he was afraid of heights, though he would never admit to have such a weakness.

“I don’t know, do you have a ladder?” Molly looked around as if expecting the ladder to suddenly appear out of thin air.

“It is _somewhere_ ,” Robert said and hesitated. “But what if we go fetch it and they fall down?” he asked, his eyes wide.

Molly looked at the barn with a deep frown.

“Help me climb on the roof and I’ll get them,” she said with confidence.

And she did, caring very little about the consequences. She climbed the tree down from the roof of the barn and handed the kittens to Rob.

 

~*~

 

Climbing trees was like riding a bicycle or opening a dead body for the first time after a holiday. She couldn’t easily forget how to do it. The moment she clung to the first branch, Molly felt the familiar surge of joy that often accompanied her while playing on the trees. She purposefully didn’t look down and focused instead on the next branch on which to stand, the best place to hold.

The branches became thicker and thicker and, finally, Molly’s feet touched the ground. She looked up with a surprised smile on her face and saw how far down she came. Well, this was certainly further than she’d ever tried. This was madness.

Molly chuckled and leant on the trunk of the tree to catch her breath and stabilize the mad beating of her heart in her ears.

“Well, don’t leave us here!” Anderson yelled down at her.

Maybe she should. Maybe that would teach them to take her seriously.

But, no, Molly really didn’t function like that.

“Give me a second!” She shouted back and hurried to rescue them.

 

~*~

 

Molly was sitting in the nice little cafe near the morgue trying not to look nervous and failing. She checked the watch what felt like the hundredth time and scolded herself. He still had about twelve minutes. It wasn’t his fault that she was so afraid of being late that she ended up in the cafe an hour and a half early.

She sighed and sipped at her blueberry latte. He’d probably order something sensible. Like espresso. Or coffee with milk...

“Doctor Hooper?” Molly looked up at the familiar voice and her eyes widened.

“Sergeant Donovan!” she said.

The woman smiled at her gently and sat on the chair in front of Molly. The chair that was supposed to be occupied in, oh, about ten minutes.

“You can call me Sally,” Donovan said.

“Okay,” Molly started, not really sure of what was going on. “And you can, too. No, I mean... Not that...” She sighed and extended her hand over the table. “I’m Molly.”

Donovan’s — Sally’s — mouth twitched with hidden amusement as she shook Molly’s hand.

“How is it that you go from this to effortlessly climbing down a tree and giving people lectures about human behaviour?”

“Well, I’m not... I mean, it was me who got us into trouble in the first place,” Molly said, trying to contain a blush.

“Yes,” Sally said. “Technically.”

The curious gaze of the other woman made Molly uncomfortable — and she endured Sherlock’s scrutiny now without a blink. Maybe because she more or less knew what she could expect from Sherlock and Sally’s presence was still a mystery to her.

“Is Gr— i-is Detective Lestrade not coming?” she asked eventually.

“No, he’ll be here, I think” Sally said and smiled knowingly. “I might have created a... situation to make sure he’s late though.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew you’d be here and I wanted to talk to you.” There was a pause when Sally looked around as if they were in a spy movie (which they really weren’t). “Mr Phillip Abbot has been detained while trying to cross the border. We may not have evidence of his illegal animal trafficking yet but assaulting police officers and a civilian is not exactly legal. And who knows what drugs he gave us,” she said with determination. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry. I should have taken you more seriously.”

“Well, we... we’re all fine,” Molly tried weakly, though privately she agreed. “And I suppose it’s easy to get paranoid when you’re spending too much time around Sherlock Holmes, so...” She shrugged.

Sally’s lips twitched again.

“You don’t have to be this forgiving, you know. I know I could have handled the case a lot better.”

“Then we all learned something new, didn’t we?” said a new voice and both women looked at the Detective Inspector standing over them with an expression of fond annoyance.

“Sir!” Sally stood up.

“It’s alright, Donovan, I’ll just go and order coffee.”

He marched towards the bar. Molly followed him with her eyes and smiled fondly when he ordered plain coffee with milk.

“Look, here’s my number,” Sally said, making Molly look at her again. “If you ever need anything, or just want to hang out, you can call me. I don’t bite.”

Molly hesitantly took the offered piece of paper, not exactly sure of what just happened.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Sally said, looking towards Greg and then winked at her. “See you around, Molly Hooper.”

She was out the door just as Greg took his coffee to their table.

“Have I missed something?” he asked. Molly chuckled nervously.

“I-I’m honestly not sure,” she said. “Have you?”

Greg smiled at her fondly and sipped at his coffee.

“So... how come you climb trees like that?” he asked after she nicked the sugar he wasn’t going to use from the saucer.

“Well... um... I kind of always somehow ended up rescuing some terrified cat before it fell from a high place,” she said and met his gaze that became intense all of the sudden. The following silence made her a bit uncomfortable. “I mean... practice makes perfect, right?” she asked nervously.

“Yes,” he said and took her hand. She very nearly squeaked, surprised at his gesture. “Yes, I imagine it does.”


End file.
